I read “it’s dying” by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It’s been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!
I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying “who uses Facebook anymore lol” is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.
I live in a rural community. Facebook has more or less replaced the web here.
Businesses post their hours, specials, and information on Facebook. Some of them don’t have websites. The rec centre has a hard time keeping their website up to date, but the Facebook group is always accurate. Newspapers have closed down, so a Facebook group keeps people apprised of what’s going on (it seems to be pretty accurate, since everyone in town is part of it, people involved in events chime in). Kids and adults sports groups advertise and tell their members what’s going on via Facebook groups.
It’s a shitty medium, since the Facebook algorithm mixes trash advertisements with town-specific events, but it seems to suffice for the town’s needs.
I suspect it isn’t just my town. The network effect is strong, so I suspect there are niche communities where Facebook is verging on ubiquitous.
I find this so annoying. I don’t use Facebook, so if you post info about your business on there, I just won’t see it and won’t use your business.
Yeah I found out the same when I moved back to Iceland. Buying a used car? Renting an apartment? Staying up to date on the parents groups in school, kids sports, any events by any business or group? Contacting any person?
Being forced to hand over all my personal information just to do any of the above really doesn’t sit well with me 😑
It sucks that you need to give them anything, but you don’t have to give them everything, and depending on what information the people you’re interacting with see, the information you give Facebook doesn’t necessarily need to be accurate.
This. In the west among the younger generations, sure, Facebook is outdated/dead. Among other generations, and across much of the world, it is still almost as essential as email.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero
To me as a kid with a rudimentary phone and little pocket money, this was also how I got onto and used to access Facebook.
Kind of reminds me of what AOL was trying to do in the ’90s. If it wasn’t for broadband Internet coming directly from telecom services they might’ve succeeded, too.
Lmao
What else would you call it? It’s them trying to be the face of the internet, the only internet these people know.
Something less dramatic and hilarious probably. Maybe manipulative business tactics.
This is infuriating to me. The Internet gave every person and every company a completely blank slate from which to represent their identity. A slate owned by no one. Then everyone voluntarily decided that’s too hard and moved everything over to the god awful site that is Facebook. Ugh.
Facebook leveraged people’s lack of technical know-how and laziness
Facebook is the closest thing to the Chinese concept of an everything app that the US has.
Puke
I’m almost a pariah in my rural area because I refuse to have a Facebook account or an iPhone.
Gotta be something wrong with that boy, Martha.
This is the best answer.
Yup niche communities is spot on. I’m into disc golf but most of the community news and local club updates still primarily occur on FB. This is also an extension of suburban and rural community popularity.